On Sat, Jul 15, 2006 at 01:44:15PM +0100, Mark Cullen wrote:
> Mark Cullen wrote:
>>
>> 256MB in there, but I think a whopping 2MB of it is allocated to the 
>> onboard video (which I don't use, but can't disable).
>>
>> Well, is `systat 1 vmstat` good enough? If so, while it's idling I am 
>> seeing:
>>
>> ---
>>    3 users    Load  1.08  1.05  1.05                  Fri Jul 14 18:16:59
>>
>> Proc:r  d  s  w    Csw   Trp   Sys  Int  Sof   Flt            PAGING 
>> SWAPPING
>>          17        86    11 13178  339  152    18            in  out 
>> in  out
>> ---
>>
>> 18 per second is that? Doesn't seem unusually high to me?!
>>
>
> I have just noticed that the "Sys" column seems to alternate between 
> ~5000 and ~10000-20000 every second. Perhaps this could be and indicator 
> of the possible cause? Not that I have any idea what the "Sys" column is 
> an indicator of? System calls per second?

Yes, syscalls per second.

What kind of disk subsystem are you running with?  IDE?  Is it
ATA66/100/133?  Or is it running in PIO mode?  What kind of network
card?  If one of your devices has to do more in the kernel/cpu than
on card, that might indicate the load, a lower-end NIC, non ATA IDE
controller, etc.  Do the Int numbers seem to jump around like the Sys
calls do?

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson@bl.org